3) The Duke (Gilligan’s) of Duke Street, D2

Decent but dull. First established in 1822 and then underwent a Victorian renovation in 1886 which qualifies The Duke to be one of Dublin’s genuine Victorian pubs. Very roomy with a large upstairs section, so certainly good for hiding. Terribly central and wonderfully nondescript – the soup of the day has been known to have merit. Walls upstairs are bedecked with Joycean memorabilia including copies of letters to Lucia Joyce and Harriet Shaw Weaver in Joyce’s own hand.

An electric fire unusually placed directly opposite the front door burns in winter and summer (one thinks of Walsh’s of Stoneybatter). The toilets at the back of the pub are located atop a disagreeably steep flight of stairs which persuades those suffering from dropsy or indolence to go incognito and hijack the disabled toilets at ground-level instead. The pub has a lesser known entrance called ‘The Print Room’ around the corner on Duke Lane Lower (as do Hodges and Figgis and Marks and Spencer), this allows many a drunken student to make it past bouncers too busy bouncing at the main entrance. All in all, a rather lazy easy favourite for the afters of any book launch taking place in the aforementioned Hodges Figgis round the corner. So-called 'Literary Pub Crawls' also take this joint as their starting place. Cue lots of suits in straw hats and bowlers waffling about the 'ineluctable modality of the visible'.

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